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Theater's Alive With The Sound Of Laptops
by Jesse Green, New York Times
Computer-enhanced pit bands are sweeping the country. Is Broadway next?

Will Diners Still Swallow This?
by Andrew Martin, New York Times
On your plate, a battle between profit and portions.

Sniff, Look, Touch
by Greg Atkinson, Seattle Times
These are the ultimate tools of the good cook.

A Museum-Quality Car For A Subway Yet Unbuilt
by William Neuman, New York Times
In 1949, 10 prototype subway cars for the Second Avenue line were delivered to the New York Board of Transportation, but the line was never completed.

Look Sharp
by William Powers, National Journal
Most American papers look as if they've stopped caring and are just going through the motions.

See You At The Barre
by Daniel J. Wakin, New York Times
Amateur ballet dancing is not so easy. Yet a substratum of dedicated — even fanatical — amateurs does exist.

God And His Gays
by Harold Meyerson, Washington Post
By effectively insisting that God is a spiteful homo-hater, his followers saddle him with ancient phobias and condemn him to the backwaters of American moral life.

The Year Without Toilet Paper
by Penelope Green, New York Times
To reduce their impact on the environment, two New Yorkers give up what most take for granted.

The Opt-Out Myth
by E.J. Graff, Columbia Journalism Review
If journalism repeatedly frames the wrong problem, then the folks who make public policy may very well deliver the wrong solution.

Rembrandt's Amsterdam
by Alan Solomon, Los Angeles Times
He was an artist, a true genius whose gift continues to enlighten and intrigue us 400 years after his birth.

The Wisdom Of Children
by Simon Rich, New Yorker
A conversation at the grownup table, as imagined at the kids' table.

Queens Of The Stone Age
by Laura Miller, Salon
Have scholars given the cavewoman a more passive image than she deserves?

Inside Japan's Puzzle Palace
by Martin Fackler, New York Times
Will there be another puzzle craze after sudoku? If so, chances are it will spring from a Japanese company called Nikoli, run by the self-proclaimed godfather of sudoku, Maki Kaji.

Sing Bodies Eclectic
by Emily Warn, BookForum
How do poets write in a culture enamored of both media spectacle (the Super Bowl, American Idol, a televised war) and unmediated individual expression — YouTube, MySpace, and blogs?

Hear Me Breathe
by Thomas Beller, Slate
The peculiar pleasure of earplugs.

Turns Out 2007's The Year Of The Writer-Director
by Rachel Abramowitz, Los Angeles Times
Almost since the beginning of Hollywood have written themselves into becoming directors. What's changed is the number of opportunities available in the form of billionaires and quasi-billionaires eager to take a chance on proven names who want to direct.

U-Turn On H Street
by DeNeen L. Brown, Washington Post
If you were eight blocks past uncertainty, three steps from neglect, five houses down from hope, and you just saw a white man with ear buds rollerblading past a crack house without looking up, would you know what street you were on in the City?

A Lost Brother's Lost Words
by Jill Hunting, Washington Post
"It was locked, but we found the key," Carol said. I knelt and raised the lid to behold a jumble of papers in utter disorder. Then I saw them: my brother's long-lost letters from Vietnam.

Facing Life With A Lethal Gene
by Amy Harmon, New York Times
Even as a raft of new DNA tests are revealing predispositions to all kinds of conditions, including breast cancer, depression and dementia, little is known about what it is like to live with such knowledge.

Can London's Skyline Grow Up Gracefully?
by Hugh Pearman, The Times
We need a new Canaletto to appreciate the possibilities of our new wave of tower-building.

Prince Of Darkness
by Ben Neihart, New York Times
How Joe Hill got over being Stephen King's son and wrote his own best-selling horror novel.

Television: Pilot Error
by Neal Justin, Star Tribune
The way TV develops programming flies in the face of creative greatness. But changing course is a tricky proposition.

Where The Dinner Table Is An Altar Of Thanks
by Danielle Pergament, New York Times
When a platter of injera arrives at the table, covered in dips of fresh, locally grown vegetables and farm-raised meats, it is immediately torn apart by everyone within arm's reach. The ritual is as much about silent gratitude for what the land has offered, as it is about digging into a great meal.

Chasing The Ultimate Waterfall
by Michael Joseph Gross, New York Times
That November marked the 150th anniversary of Livingstone's discovery of Victoria Falls, and when I heard that an expedition would retrace a few days of the explorer's journey, ending on the island where he first saw the falls, I made up my mind to go.

You've Read The Novels (Now Read The Footnotes)
by William Grimes, New York Times
Annotated editions and period guides are not necessary to grasp the drama of classic literature, but they can enrich one's reading.

Scrap The Greenback!
by Christopher Bonanos, Slate
It's time to get rid of the dollar bill.

Cupcakes That Click
by Kelly DiNardo, Washington Post
The obstacle for online bake shops: selling customers on a leap of faith.

Pig Out
by Nocolette Hahn Niman, New York Times
Because we ask the ultimate sacrifice of these creatures, it is incumbent on us to ensure that they have decent lives.

A Place To Turn When A Newborn Is Fated To Die
by Neela Banerjee, New York Times
Families whose babies suffer from fatal conditions are turning to specialized hospice programs for help.

Has Success Spoiled NPR?
by Drew Lindsay, Washingtonian
forty years after public broadcasting was born, National Public Radio has it all — fame, money, and a powerhouse news operation. But has it lost what made it special?

The State Of Stata
by Robert Campbell, Boston Globe
Now three years old, the inventive MIT building is meeting many of the goals that were set for it.

Who Has The Bread For A $15 Hot Dog?
by Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times
A hamburger at that price would be an obscenity. But a lowly wiener? This is history in the making, if not a sure sign of the apocalypse.

To Have, Hold And CHerish, Until Bedtime
by Tracie Rozhon, New York Times
Not since the Victorian age of starched sheets and starchy manners, builders and architects say, have there been so many orders for separate bedrooms. Or separate sleeping nooks. Or his-and-her wings.

Lotto Makes Sense, Even For Losers
by Benedict Carey, New York Times
As long as the fantasy is possible, even a negligible probability of winning becomes paradoxically reinforcing.

The Big Leap
by Deborah Netburn, Los Angeles Times
There are a lot of somebodies in Hollywood, but there are even more nobodies — the workday dreamers who give L.A. its unique texture and energy. In a town where writers want to be actors and video store clerks yearn to direct, hopefuls like Brad Burnett, Dino Pergola and Matt and Greg Bell became faces in the crowd when they moved here from the heartland. We took a closer look as they hustled valet jobs and unpaid agency internships, learned how to write screenplays and found ways to measure success one meeting at a time. This is the story of their first year in L.A.

The Theory Of The Leisure Class
by Steven E. Landsburg, Slate
An econonmic mystery: why do the poor seem to have more free time than the rich?

Do The Impossible: Know Thyself
by Theodore Dalrymple, New English Review
Self-understanding is not around the corner and never will be. We shall never be able seamlessly to join knowledge and action.

Think You Know How To Read, Do You?
by Tom Lutz, Salon
A new throng of authors wants to sve literature from our nefarious English departments and teach us how to read their way. Now, class, pay attention.

How To Bottle A Generation
by Eric Wilson, New York Times
Calvin Klein hopes to rejuvenate a fragrance embodying the essense of hip 20-somethings — even at the risk that such a notion is as outdated as a Prince song about partying like it's 1999.

Classical Music Ring Tones: Short And Sour
by Alan G. Artner, Chicago Tribune
Every generation finds new and better ways to ruin things, and one of the best today is the classical ring tone.

How We Ended Up With The Great Wall Of Waterfront Blight
by Brian Miller, Seattle Weekly
The great bypass route was actually conceived during the 1920s, well before there was any need for it.

Serving You Tonight Will Be Our Lawyer
by Adam Liptak, New York Times
American judges have apparently never punished even tough, mean and wrongheaded restaurant reviews.

When Cutting Up In Class Is Okay
by Valerie Strauss, Washington Post
Once the province of high school, dissections have moved into earlier grades, science teachers say. It's common for middle school students now to dissect animals, and some elementary classes do, too.

You Are Where You Eat
by Beth Hawkins, City Pages
The weekly shopping run has become inextricably boundup with the modern shopper's identity. The choice is about money, certainly, but it's also about tribe. The store tells you who you are — and just as important — who you are not.

The New Disorder
by David Denby, New Yorker
Adventures in film narrative.

He Runs That Mickey Mouse Outfit
by Laura M. Holson, New York Times
A Hollywood outsider whose independent shop popularized computer animation, Mr Lasseter might seem an odd fit for a studio built on old-school cartoons and the mythology of Snow White and Cinderella. But since Pixar was acquired, Mr. Lasseter has been heralded as a latter-day Walt Disney, a cultural arbiter who can rekindle the spirit of Disney's famous animation at its theme parks, on store shelves and in a theater near you.

Going Native In The Australia Outback
by Rolf Potts, Slate
I have resolved to spend the next week looking for a meaningful experience of Australian aboriginal culture.

At Bauer Martinz Studios, Trial And Losts Of Error
by John Hom, Los Angeles Times
Surviving Hollywood is harder than it looks. Just ask producer Philippe Martinez.

Confessions Of A Book Abuser
by Ben Schott, New York Times
While the ideas expressed in even the vilest of books are worthy of protection, I find it difficult to respect books as objects, and see no harm whatsoever in abusing them.

Darwin's God
by Robin Marantz-Henig, New York Times
Call it God; call it superstition — whatever you call it, there seems an inherent human drive to believe in something transcendent, unfathomable and otherworldly, something beyond the reach or understanding of science.

Campus Exposure
by Alexandra Jacobs, New York Times
These days, when anyone can run a virtual media empire out of a dorm room, student-generated sex magazines, some with the imprimatur of university financing and faculty advisers, are becoming a fact of campus life.

Between Two Kitchen Stools
by Raphael Minder, Financial Times
While the city of Brussels has one of the strongest reputations in Europe for traditional and very rich cuisine, food connoisseurs are concerned that a wider and more fanciful selection of establishments is endangering this.

A Date With Destiny
by Michelle Higgins, New York Times
The date — the almost numerically perfect 7/7/07 — is being sought after by couples around the country as the ideal day for a wedding.

The Fine Art Of Dying Well
by Charles Krauthammer, Time
Dying well is a matter of luck. Timing is everything.

My Search For The Perfect Apple
by John Cloud, Time
I know I've been listening to too much NPR because I started wondering: How much Middle Eastern oil did it take to get that California apple to me? Which farmer should I support — the one who rejected pesticides in Califronia or the one who was, in some romatnic sense, a neighbor? Most important, didn't the aple's taste suffer after the fruit crated and refrigerated and jostled for thousands of miles?

Whose Bed Is It Anyway?
by Penelope Green, New York Times
In the fight over co-sleeping, the children seem to be winning.

Authors Find Their Voices, And Audience, In Podcasts
by Andrew Adam Newman, New York Times
Writers sturggling to find a publisher are taking the high-tech, grass-roots approach.

Dead Heads
by Kent Sepkowitz, Slate
Why doctors are bad at mortality.